Muddy ‘Boots’: How Translation Fuels Critical Scholarship

The University of Washington presents

Muddy ‘Boots’: How Translation Fuels Critical Scholarship

A colloquium with translator and scholar Miriam Udel (Emory University)

January 28, 12:30 pm

Thomson Hall 317 at UW

Lunch is provided and registration is required; register using this button and select the January 28 event from the list of four events that this form will display: 

Miriam Udel is the editor and translator of Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature (NYU Press, 2020) and its companion volume of critical scholarship, Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature (Princeton University Press, 2025). Her translation of Chaver Paver’s Labzik: Tales of a Clever Pup will be published later this year (SUNY Press). In this colloquium talk, she will reflect on how the process of literary translation allowed her to “get inside the text,” enriching her analysis of a wide range of works in prose and verse. As a particular case study, she will discuss a Soviet Yiddish narrative poem by Leyb Kvitko, “Buts un di sanitarn,” rendered in her translation as “Boots and the Bath Squad.” 

Miriam Udel will also deliver a public lecture the same day, January 28, at 4:30 pm: “Umbrella Sky – Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature"; this is a talk about her new scholarly monograph, which she calls a companion volume to her anthology of translations, Honey on the Page. This talk will be at HUB 145 at UW. Details and registration available here.